This blog's title is based upon the best question I ever overheard being asked, by a young Liverpudlian child to his mother, as in "What's..?".
The answer seems to be something of a creative and cultural nature which, in deed (primarily the making of art) and word, this blog intends to explore...

Thursday, March 20, 2014

World Cup '74 Portrait #5 (Heinz Flohe: West Germany)

graphite & putty eraser/30x21cm

Today’s subject, randomly chosen from the now 252-strong
pool of available player talent, is Heinz Flohe, a player who was selected for
inclusion in both the FKS & Panini albums (the original image on which this
drawing is based having been chosen from the former) & the official West
German squad for the 1974 World Cup, subsequently making three appearance in
the tournament itself, for the whole of his country’s 0 – 1 First Round loss to
neighbours East Germany, & then as a late substitute in both of the
following matches, the Second Round group victories over Yugoslavia, &
Sweden. All of the portraits might be regarded as having a certain inherent
poignancy, depicting as they do young men as they were 40 (& more, given
the obvious vintage even then of some of the original source images) years ago,
but some perhaps more so, in that they are, in effect, ghosts of ghosts as in
this instance, with Flohe having died in 2013.

As is the format for the project, the original sticker
image-object was photocopied first in colour, this then copied again, enlarged,
in black & white to provide the immediate reference point from which the
drawing was processed. Through the copying processes, image quality degrades,
to a point far removed from the original photographic print or transparency of
the portrait subject that provided the image from which the sticker itself was
designed & printed, subjecting the image to numerous layers of removal
before being finally ‘re-mediated’ as drawing, a process of, we have named
& do so again, ‘de-photography’.